Moral authority
THE leader of the opposition, Khaleda Zia, on the eve of International Day against Torture, urged the government to immediately take effective steps to investigate each incident of "repression on politicians, businessmen and citizens" during the emergency period and hold trials of the people responsible. She also appealed to the United Nations to take necessary steps for encouraging the government to take such initiatives.
This is indeed a befitting statement from the leader of the opposition of a democratic country. However, as far as Khaleda Zia and her five-year rule is concerned, it would be only natural to ask if she possesses the moral authority to ask for the trials of the perpetrators of the alleged crimes committed during the past caretaker government.
If one reflects back to what happened following the general election of October 2001, it would be obvious that all the alleged crimes Khaleda Zia is talking about now, the modes of many of those were invented whereas the others reached their peak only during her dreadful rule.
Torture in remand, custodial torture and death, extra-judicial killing through so-called "Operation Clean Heart" and "crossfire" remain the hallmark of the BNP-Jamaat regime. Remand became such a widely abused phenomenon to torture the political opponents that one of our revered retired chief justices wrote a poem entitled "The State is on Remand."
New methods were invented by the BNP activists to torture the opposition political workers and religious minority. Torture, rapes, and killings became the rule of the day. Hundreds of opposition political activists, including personalities like S.A.M.S. Kibria and Ahasanullah Master, were killed, and thousands were driven out from their homes.
Investigations by the criminal investigation department became a mockery, where innocent people were arrested and made to confess to crimes they had never committed. Every judicial investigation (whose reports were never made public) apparently pointed to "foreign" involvement.
Violations of human rights were so rampant that international conferences were held in many capitals of the western world, including the House of Lords (with Lord Avebury as prime mover), to press the Bangladesh government to redress the situations. The author of this piece attended and organised more than one such conference, and kept constant communications with UNHRC about the despicable human right situations in Bangladesh.
It was during her tenure that free-thinker and author Muntasir Mamoon, human rights activist Shahriar Kabir, politicians of the like of Saber Hossain Chowdhury, journalists Enamul Hoque Chowdhury and Selim Samad (who had to take asylum in Canada) were arrested and abused in custody.
At the end of the investigations, even when she was at the helm of the state, the accusations brought against them were found to be absolutely unfounded.
It was during her rule, before any opposition political program, thousands of people, many of them innocent bystanders, were arrested, bundled in police vans and were locked behind bar for indefinite period, for reasons totally unknown to them and their keens.
Is it not natural that before demanding trials of the alleged wrong-doers during the emergency, when the fundamental rights of the people were constitutionally suspended anyway, trials should be held for those perpetrators who indulged themselves in more severe crimes during her regime?
In her statement the leader of the opposition termed the past caretaker government an unconstitutional one. Here again, the natural question would be whether the Iajuddin-led government that preceded the last CTG was a constitutional one to start with.
In fact, the seed of the Fakhruddin-led CTG was sowed itself in the unconstitutionality of Iajuddin's take-over as the CTG chief, by-passing a number of provisions of the constitution. And it was known to the nation who was behind Iajudddin's decision to declare himself the chief adviser of the CTG and his subsequent actions as a remote control chief adviser to materialise her nefarious agenda.
Even when a bench of the honourable High Court, in response to a writ petition challenging the constitutional legality of the Iajudddin government, was about to deliver its ruling, it was apparent to the nation who manipulated the then-CJ, in a manner with no precedent in the operation of higher judiciary, in suspending the issuance of the ruling at the last minute.
As a citizen of a democratic country and more so as the leader of the parliamentary opposition of the parliament, constituted out of the most free and fair election in Bangladesh's electoral history, she has all the legal rights to ask for the trials for wrong-doings committed by government machinery of any past government.
However, her moral right to demand the investigations and trials loses much of the ground when she fails to include and apologise for the similar offences committed during her own tenure, which in magnitude, severity and number, far outweigh what happened during the tenure of the last CTG.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments